Friday, May 11, 2018

Amazon is Showing What it's Like to Have a Home Completely Controlled by Alexa: Lights, Locks, Libido (AMZN; GOOG)

Amazon
wants to show you how much you can rely on its Alexa voice assistant to
control everything in your home, from thermostats to TVs.
The company announced Wednesday it's partnering with homebuilder Lennar
to create "Amazon Experience Centers" — model homes containing built-in
Alexa-controlled appliances — in hopes of persuading homeowners and
homebuyers to embed Amazon services into their houses.

Lennar is outfitting
model homes with TVs connected to Amazon's Fire TV system, buttons that
can reorder goods from Amazon, and Alexa-enabled products that allow
customers to control the lights, TV, shades and other appliances with
their voices. Customers can tour the homes in cities around the U.S. to get an idea of how they work.

Watch out, Alexa! Google is catching up to Amazon in the smart home wars

Smart home device makers have become much more supportive of
Google Assistant and the Google Home speaker over the past few months. Google now says its voice assistant can control over 5,000 smart home devices–up
from 1,500 devices in January–and the company claims to be working with
“every major device brand” in the United States, covering a wide range
of categories from security systems to dishwashers to robotic vacuums.

While
it’s unclear exactly what caused the surge in device support for
Google, the company released a much cheaper version of its Home speaker
last fall and has gained ground on Amazon in market share. Google has also aggressively promoted Assistant at industry trade shows such as CES and SXSW in hopes of getting device makers and developers on board....MORE